THE BELIEVING CHURCH
The gates of heaven are swinging open so often these days, as the
brave ones pass in, that it would be a wonder if some gleams of
celestial brightness did not come down to us.
We get it unexpectedly in the roar of the street; in the quiet of the
midnight; in the sun-spattered aisles of the forest; in the faces of
our friends; in the turbid stream of our poor burdened humanity. They
shine out and are gone--these flashes of eternal truth. The two worlds
cannot be far apart when the travel from one to the other is so heavy!
No, I do not know what heaven is like, but it could not seem strange
to me, for I know so many people now who are there! Sometimes I feel
like the old lady who went back to Ontario to visit, and who said she
felt more at home in the cemetery than anywhere else, for that is
where most of her friends had gone!
These heavenly gleams have shown us new things in our civilization and
in our social life, and most of all in our own hearts. Above all other
lessons we have learned, or will learn, is the fallacy of hatred.
Hatred weakens, destroys, disintegrates, scatters. The world's disease
to-day is the withering, blighting, wasting malady of hatred, which
has its roots in the narrow patriotism which teaches people to love
their own country and despise all others. The superiority bug which
enters the brain and teaches a nation that they are God's chosen
people, and that all other nations must some day bow in obeisance to
them, is the microbe which has poisoned the world. We must love our
own country best, of course, just as we love our own children best;
but it is a poor mother who does not desire the highest good for every
other woman's child.
We are sick unto death of hatred, force, brutality; blood-letting will
never bring about lasting results, for it automatically plants a crop
of bitterness and a desire for revenge which start the trouble all
over again. To kill a man does not prove that he was wrong, neither
does it make converts of his friends. A returned man told me about
hearing a lark sing one morning as the sun rose over the
shell-scarred, desolated battlefield, with its smouldering piles of
ruins which had once been human dwelling-places, and broken,
splintered trees which the day before had been green and growing. Over
this scene of horror, hatred, and death arose the lark into the
morning air, and sang his glorious song. "And then," said the boy, as
he steadied himself on his crutches, "he sang the very same song over
again, just to show us that he could do it again and meant every word
of it, and it gave me a queer feeling. It seemed to show me that the
lark had the straight of it, and we were all wrong. But," he added,
after a pause, "nobody knows how wrong it all is like the men who've
been there!"
Of course we know that the world did not suddenly go wrong. Its
thought must have been wrong all the time, and the war is simply the
manifestation of it; one of them at least. But how did it happen? That
is the question which weary hearts are asking all over the world. We
all know what is wrong with Germany. That's easy. It is always easier
to diagnose other people's cases than our own--and pleasanter. We know
that the people of Germany have been led away by their teachers,
philosophers, writers; they worship the god of force; they recognize
no sin but weakness and inefficiency. They are good people, only for
their own way of thinking; no doubt they say the same thing of us.
Wrong thinking has caused all our trouble, and the world cannot be
saved by physical means, but only by the spiritual forces which change
the mental attitude. When the sword shall be beaten into the
ploughshare and the spear into the pruning-hook, that will be the
outward sign of the change of thought from destructive, competitive
methods to constructive and coöperative regeneration of the world! It
is interesting to note that the sword and spear are not going to be
thrown on the scrap-heap; they are to be transformed--made over. All
energy is good; it is only its direction, which may become evil.
It is not to be wondered at that the world has run to blind hatred
when we stop to realize that the Church has failed to teach the
peaceable fruits of the spirit, and has preferred to fight human
beings rather than prejudice, ignorance, and sin, and has too often
gauged success by competition between its various branches, rather
than by coöperation against the powers of evil.
At a recent convention of a certain religious body, one sister, who
gave in her report as to how the Lord had dealt with the children of
men in her part of the vineyard, deeply deplored the hardness of the
sinners' hearts, their proneness to err, and the worldliness of even
professing Christians, who seemed now to be wholly given over to the
love of pleasure. She told also of the niggardly contributions; the
small congregations. It was, indeed, a sad and discouraging tale that
she unfolded. Only once did she show any enthusiasm, and that was in
her closing words: "But I thank my Lord and Heavenly Master that the
other church in our town ain't done no better!"
The Church is our oldest and best organization. It has enough energy,
enough driving force, to better conditions for all if it could be
properly applied; but being an exceedingly respectable institution it
has been rather shy of changes, and so has found it hard to adapt
itself to new conditions. It has clung to shadows after the substance
has departed; and even holds to the old phraseology which belongs to a
day long dead. Stately and beautiful and meaningful phrases they were,
too, in their day, but now their fires are dead, their lights are out,
their "punch" has departed. They are as pale and sickly as the red
lanterns set to guard the spots of danger on the street at night and
carelessly left burning all the next day.
Every decade sees the people's problems change, but the Church goes on
with Balaam and Balak, with King Ahasuerus, and the two she-bears that
came out of the woods. I shudder when I think of how much time has
been spent in showing how Canaan was divided, and how little time is
spent on showing how the Dominion of Canada should be divided; of how
much time has been given to the man born blind, and how little to a
consideration of the causes and prevention of that blindness; of the
time spent on our Lord's miraculous feeding of the five thousand, and
how little time is spent on trying to find out his plans for feeding
the hungry ones of to-day, who, we are bold to believe, are just as
precious in his sight.
The human way is to shelve responsibility. The disciples came to
Christ when the afternoon began to grow into evening, and said, "These
people haven't anything to eat, send them away!" This is the human
attitude toward responsibility; that is why many a beggar gets a
quarter--and is told to "beat it"! In this manner are we able to
side-step responsibility. To-day's problems are apt to lead to
difficulties; it is safer to discuss problems of long ago than of the
present; for the present ones concern real people, and they may not
like it. Hush! Don't offend Deacon Bones; stick to Balaam--he's dead.
In some respects the Church resembles a coal furnace that has been
burning quite a while without being cleaned out. There form in the
bottom certain hard substances which give off neither light nor heat,
nor allow a free current of air to pass through. These hard substances
are called "clinkers." Once they were good pieces of burning coal,
igniting the coal around them, but now their fire is dead, their heat
is spent, and they must be removed for the good of the furnace.
Something like this has happened in the Church. It has a heavy
percentage of human "clinkers," sometimes in the front pews, sometimes
in the pulpit. They were good people once, too, possessed of spiritual
life and capable of inspiring those around them. But spiritual
experiences cannot be warmed over--they must be new every day. That is
what Saint Paul meant when he said that the outer man decays, but the
inner man is renewed. An old experience in religion is of no more
value than a last year's bird's nest! You cannot feed the hungry with
last year's pot-pies!
This is the day of opportunity for the Church, for the people are
asking to be led! It will have to realize that religion is a "here
and now" experience, intended to help people with their human worries
to-day, rather than an elaborate system of golden streets, big
processions, walls of jasper, and endless years of listless loafing on
the shores of the River of Life! The Church has directed too much
energy to the business of showing people how to die and teaching them
to save their souls, forgetting that one of these carefully saved
souls is after all not worth much. Christ said, "He that saveth his
life shall lose it!" and "He that loseth his life for my sake shall
find it!" The soul can be saved only by self-forgetfulness. The
monastery idea of retirement from the world in order that one may be
sure of heaven is not a courageous way of meeting life's difficulties.
But this plan of escape has been very popular even in Protestant
churches, as shown in our hymnology: "Why do we linger?" "We are but
strangers here"; "Father, dear Father, take Thy children home"; "Earth
is a wilderness, heaven is my home"; "I'm a pilgrim and a stranger";
"I am only waiting here to hear the summons, child, come home." These
are some of the hymns with which we have beguiled our weary days of
waiting; and yet, for all this boasted desire to be "up and away," the
very people who sang these hymns have not the slightest desire to
leave the "wilderness."
The Church must renounce the idea that, when a man goes forth to
preach the Gospel, he has to consider himself a sort of glorified
immigration agent, whose message is, "This way, ladies and gentlemen,
to a better, brighter, happier world; earth is a poor place to stick
around, heaven is your home." His mission is to teach his people to
make of this world a better place--to live their lives here in such a
way that other men and women will find life sweeter for their having
lived. Incidentally we win heaven, but it must be a result, not an
objective.
We know there is a future state, there is a land where the
complications of this present world will be squared away. Some call it
a Day of Judgment; I like best to think of it as a day of
explanations. I want to hear God's side. Also I know we shall not
have to lie weary centuries waiting for it. When the black curtain of
death falls on life's troubled scenes, there will appear on it these
words in letters of gold, "End of Part I. Part II will follow
immediately."
I know that I shall have a sweet and beautiful temper in heaven, where
there will be nothing to try it, no worries, misunderstandings,
elections, long and tedious telephone conversations; people who insist
on selling me a dustless mop when I am hot on the trail of an idea.
There will be none of that, so that it will not be difficult to keep
sweet and serene. I would not thank any one to hand me a sword and
shield when the battle is over; I want it now while the battle rages;
I claim my full equipment now, not on merit, but on need.
Everything in life encourages me to believe that God has provided a
full equipment for us here in life if we will only take it. He would
not store up every good thing for the future and let us go short here.
In a prosperous district in Ontario there stands a beautiful brick
house, where a large family of children lived long ago. The parents
worked early and late, grubbing and saving and putting money in the
bank. Sometimes the children resented the hard life which they led,
and wished for picnics, holidays, new clothes, ice-cream, and the
other fascinating things of childhood. Some of the more ambitious ones
even craved a higher education, but they were always met by the same
answer when the request involved the expenditure of money. The answer
was: "It will all be yours some day. Now, don't worry; just let us
work together and save all we can; it's all for you children and it
will all be yours some day. You can do what you like with it when we
are dead and gone!" I suppose the children in their heart of hearts
said, "Lord haste the day!"
The parents passed on in the fullness of time. Some of the children
went before them. Those who were left fell heir to the big house and
the beautiful grounds, but they were mature men and women then, and
they had lost the art of enjoyment. The habit of saving and grubbing
was upon them, and their aspirations for better things had long ago
died out. Everything had been saved for the future, and now, when it
came, they found out that it was all too late. The time for learning
and enjoyment had gone by. A few dollars spent on them when they were
young would have done so much.
If that is a poor policy for earthly parents to follow, I believe it
is not a good line for a Heavenly Parent to take.
We need an equipment for this present life which will hold us steady
even when everything around us is disturbed; that will make us desire
the good of every one, even those who are intent upon doing us evil;
that will transform the humblest and most disagreeable task into one
of real pleasure; that will enable us to see that we have set too high
a value on the safety of life and property and too trifling an
estimate on spiritual things; that will give us a proper estimate of
our own importance in the general scheme of things, so that we will
not think we are a worm in the dust, nor yet mistake ourselves for the
President of the Company!
The work of the Church is to teach these ethical values to the people.
It must begin by teaching us to have more faith in each other, and
more coördination. We cannot live a day without each other, and every
day we become more interdependent. Times have changed since the
cave-dwelling days when every man was his own butcher, baker, judge,
jury, and executioner; when no man attempted more than he could do
alone, and therefore regarded every other man as his natural enemy and
rival, the killing of whom was good business. Coöperation began when
men found that two men could hunt better than one, and so one drove
the bear out of the cave and the other one killed him as he went past
the gap, and then divided him, fifty-fifty. That was the beginning of
coöperation, which is built on faith. Strange, isn't it, that at this
time, when we need each other so badly, we are not kinder to each
other? Our national existence depends upon all of us--we have pooled
our interests, everything we have is in danger, everything we have
must be mobilized for its defense.
Danger such as we are facing should drive the petty little meannesses
out of us, one would think, and call out all the latent heroism of our
people. People talk about this being the Church's day of opportunity.
So it is, for the war is teaching us ethical values, which has always
been a difficult matter. We like things that we can see, lay out, and
count! But the war has changed our appraisement of things, both of men
and of nations. A country may be rich in armies, ships, guns, and
wealth, and yet poor, naked, and dishonored in the eyes of the world;
a country may be broken, desolate, shell-riven, and yet have a name
that is honorable in all the earth. So with individuals. We have set
too high a value on property and wealth, too low an estimate on
service.
Our ideas of labor have been wrong. Labor to us has meant something
disagreeable, which, if we endure patiently for a season, we may then
be able to "chuck." Its highest reward is to be able to quit it--to go
on the retired list.
"Mary married well," declared a proud mother, "and now she does not
lift a hand to anything."
Poor Mary! What a slow time she must have!
The war is changing this; people are suddenly stripped of their
possessions, whether they be railroad stock, houses, or lands, or,
like that of a poor fellow recently tried for vagrancy here, whose
assets were found to be a third interest in a bear. It does not
matter--the wealthy slacker is no more admired than the poor one.
Money has lost its purchasing quality when it comes to immunity from
responsibility.
The coördination of our people has begun, the forces of unity are
working; but they are still hindered by the petty little jealousies
and disputes of small people who do not yet understand the seriousness
of the occasion. So long as church bodies spend time fighting about
methods of baptism, and call conventions to pass resolutions against
church union, which would unquestionably add to the effectiveness of
the Church and enable it to make greater headway against the powers of
evil; so long as the channels through which God's love should flow to
the people are so choked with denominational prejudice, it is not much
wonder that many people are experiencing a long, dry spell, bitterly
complaining that the fountain has gone dry. Love, such as Christ
demonstrated, is the only hope of this sin-mad world. When the Church
shows forth that love and leads the people to see that the reservoirs
of love in the mountains of God are full to overflowing, and every man
can pipe the supply into his own heart and live victoriously,
abundantly, gloriously, as God intended us all to live, then it will
come about that the sword will be beaten into the ploughshare and the
spear into the pruning-hook, and the Lord will truly hear our prayer
and heal our land.